Jesus like us in every way except sin
- he waits for you to approach him

Homily for the Third Sunday of Easter Year B

by Fr. Tommy Lane

If you were living in Palestine at the time of Jesus and
met Jesus what sort of person would you expect him to be? What would he be like to
talk to? Did he have a good sense of humor? When Jesus appeared on Easter Sunday
evening in Jerusalem to the group of disciples it was a gentle encounter as we
heard in the Gospel (Luke 24:35-48). The disciples were frightened after his
death but he calmed them, “Look at my hands and my feet; yes it is I indeed.
Touch me and see for yourselves.” (Luke 24:39) Jesus risen from the dead was
still someone you could talk to. He wasn’t someone with
airs and graces. He was hungry and accepted what food they had, grilled fish,
which he took and ate before their eyes (Luke 24:42-43). It was so casual, so
normal, so informal and so ordinary despite being the first encounter of the
risen Jesus with his disciples!

When I teach Scripture courses people have told me it
helped them to pray when I showed all the places in the Gospels where we see
these human touches of the divine Jesus. So to help you draw closer to Jesus in
prayer I would like to do the same for you today. If we knew
the Lord in person when he was ministering in Palestine we would see how
easygoing a person he was, that he had no airs or graces, and that he was easy
to talk to. As we read the Gospels
we see that he loved other people; love in
the sense of unselfish Godlike love. He loved Martha, Mary and Lazarus (John
11:5). Several times in John’s
Gospel we are told that one of the disciples was a special friend to Jesus, the
beloved disciple (John 13:23; 19:26; 20:2;
21:7,20). This is what Jesus said of the sinner woman in Luke 7:44-45 to the
Pharisee who invited him to his house, “I came into your house, and you poured
no water over my feet, but she has poured out her tears over my feet and wiped
them away with her hair. You gave
me no kiss, but she has been covering my feet with kisses ever since I came in.”
She reminds us of the hymn which begins, “Reach out and touch the Lord...” What confidence she had in approaching Jesus. How easy
it was to approach Jesus. No wonder that they said to Jesus in
Mark 12:14 “we know that you are an honest man, that you are not afraid of
anyone, because human rank means nothing to you…” Class distinctions mean
nothing to Jesus. They are figments
of our imagination, results of pride and sinfulness, but in the eyes of Jesus class
distinctions mean nothing.

When we suffer great pain we cry. Jesus too cried when he hurt. When his cousin and friend Lazarus died
we read in John 11:35-36 that Jesus wept. Jesus
cried before entering Jerusalem for the last
time before his passion because he knew they would not accept him as the Messiah
and that the city would be destroyed (Luke 19:41-44).

Jesus
certainly knew how to enjoy himself. He
attended several dinners: the one given him by Matthew/Levi after he called him
(Matt 9:9-10; Mark 2:13-15; Luke 5:27-29); at Zacchaeus’ house (Luke 19:7);
and Pharisees invited him to dinner (Luke 7:36; 11:37; 14:1); and there was
dinner at Lazarus’ house (John 12:2). At
Cana (John 2) Jesus changed between 120 and 180 gallons of water into wine so
that the wedding guests could continue to enjoy themselves, and it was wine of
the best vintage. (At that time the
wedding celebration lasted a week). Jesus
wanted people to enjoy community celebrations because they were a foretaste of
the banquet of heaven. Obviously
Jesus enjoyed such occasions himself because of the description of him,

a glutton and a drunkard,
a friend of tax collectors and sinners (Luke 7:34)

When there is injustice we become
angry. Jesus also became angry when
he saw injustice. He drove the
money-changers out of the temple (Matt 21:12-13). Anger is an emotion with which we are uncomfortable because we
sometimes handle it badly. Anger, like every
emotion, is neutral, neither good nor bad. What makes it good or bad is what we do with the emotion. We can sometimes take our frustration with one person out on
a different person but when Jesus vented his
anger, he never directed it at the wrong person, always at the appropriate
person. Jesus never did anything
violent against any person. Anger
is good when it arises from a suitable cause, when it is properly directed and
correctly expressed. Anger has to
be expressed in some way and let go, otherwise it eats into the person. Jesus didn’t hold onto anger; he
expressed it and let it go. That
was a healthy way to live.

Like all
of us, Jesus was afraid when faced with something dreadful. We all know about Jesus’ agony in
Gethsemane when he asked his Father to let the chalice of his passion pass him
by. But in John 12:27 Jesus said,
“Now my soul is troubled.” Imagine
Jesus saying his soul is troubled! Very
human and ordinary, don’t you think? How
did Jesus cope when he was troubled? He
prayed and then he was uplifted once again so that in the following verse we
hear Jesus pray, “Father, glorify your name.” If
our prayer is working, if we are praying properly, it should also uplift us as
it uplifted Jesus.

We suffer
many temptations and Jesus also was tempted on many occasions not only in the
desert for 40 days though he did not sin. During the Last
Supper, in Luke’s account, Jesus says, “You are the men who have stood by me
faithfully in my trials” (Luke 22,28). Through Peter, Satan tempted
Jesus, when Peter said he must not suffer and die in Jerusalem (Matt 16:21-23;
Mark 8:31-33). Jesus’ reply was, “Get
behind me Satan.” Heb 4:15 says
that Jesus was tempted in every way that we are though he did not sin. A
document of Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes
§22, says Jesus

“laboured with human hands,
thought with a human mind, acted with a human will, and loved with a human
heart. Born of Mary the Virgin he
truly became one of us and, sin apart, was like us in every way.”

When I teach Scripture courses people told me it helped them to pray when I showed all the places in the Gospels where we see
these human touches of the divine Jesus. That brings me back to our
Gospel today and the gentle meeting between Jesus and his disciples. The
disciples were frightened after Jesus’ death but he calmed them, “Look at my hands and my feet;
yes it is I indeed. Touch me and
see for yourselves.” (Luke 24:39) A pretty
normal person, don’t you think, someone you could talk to? He was hungry and
accepted what food they had, grilled fish, which he took and ate before their
eyes (Luke 24:42-43). Jesus is waiting for you. You can tell him everything. You do not have to hide anything. Class distinctions mean nothing to
Jesus. Jesus is waiting for you to approach him. “Look at my hands and my
feet; yes it is I indeed. Touch me
and see for yourselves.” (Luke 24:39)